Hi Folks,
In this blog post, let’s see how we can create a custom connector without leaving our own Visual Studio for building a custom connector. Ideally for building any custom connector, we need to create them in https://make.powerapps.com or https://make.powerautomate.com. Last month Microsoft Announced that Power Platform is now a connected service in Visual Studio 2022. In this blog, we will utilize its capability…
Before diving deeper, let’s see what are the prerequisites..
- Visual Studio
- ASP .NET Web API knowledge
- Canvas Apps knowledge
Let’s get started..
Step 1:
Create ASP.NET Web API Project in Visual Studio
Step 2:Choose your option as below and click on Next..
Step 3:
Choose your next steps as below and click on Next to proceed, make sure to choose authentication type as None
Step 4:
Create a ASP.NET Core Web API Project
Step 5:
By adding Power Platform as a service dependency, you can update an existing custom connector, or create a new one from your API.
If you want to expose your local running API to a public endpoint, I prefer using Dev Tunnels feature of Visual Studio…
That’s it, you have started running your API.
Step 6:
Now let’s create a Mobile App with Power Apps…with the same login you have used for the Visual Studio to create a custom connector..
Step 7:
First check if Custom Connector has been created in your tenant and authenticate the connection….navigate to https://make.powerapps.com and click on Discover at the left of the page….and then click on Custom Connectors, you should see a connector which we created from Visual Studio….nice isn’t it…
Step 8:
All you need to create a connection by clicking on the + sign available..
Once connected, now try creating a mobile Canvas App..
In the Canvas App, try adding data…and search for Weather Sample which you created, you should see something like below…
Step 9:
Once the web API is running in your development environment, you can debug in real time and even Hot Reload your code.

References:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/test/dev-tunnels?view=aspnetcore-7.0#create-a-tunnel
Thank you for reading…
Cheers,
PMDY